New furniture or not?

Here is something interesting for you. I urge you to read everything here and look at the corresponding pictures.

A while ago we received a call from a potential client complaining about her chairs. Sandra told us that her chairs were too wobbly. So I booked an appointment and went to West Vancouver to meet the lady and have look at her chairs. Sandra and her husband, Mike, are very nice people, they are not cheap & they can afford good things.

As I was talking to them I finally asked if they were willing to share from where they got their chairs. To my surprise they told me the name of very a well known and highly reputable furniture dealer that I have done business with, and they are awesome people too!

So I was thinking, the furniture dealer has great people who sold chairs to my great clients. Everything is great! Except, maybe, how these chairs were made? Let’s see…

Here I took some pictures to explain to you how even though you can buy brand new furniture, your chairs can still be pretty bad.

The Ugly Truth

  • Picture 1 shows one of the chairs when it entered our shop.
  • Pictures 2-6 show how wobbly those chairs were. The manufacturer of these chairs didn’t even bother to glue them!
  • Picture 7 shows how the manufacturer actually drilled the wood in a place where wood should never be drilled or screwed, then just patched it up with wood filler.
  • Picture 8 shows what I mentioned above. Plus, you can see here how the dowels were placed showing poor workmanship. It also shows a screw I mentioned. Now that is disquieting!

A New Beginning

  • Pictures 9-10 show what we did and what it takes to do good work.
  • Pictures 11-12 show how we glued dowels with a special glue that never moves.
  • Pictures 13-14 show how we glued and clamped Sandra’s chairs.
  • Picture 15 shows corner blocks glued.
  • Picture 16 shows the end results! A “New”, stable set of chairs.

On a weekly basis we are asked: “is it is better to fix old furniture of just simply buy new furniture?” These pictures provide the answer. In this case, yes! It is better to fix old furniture, when done right.

We made sure that the frames would perform well for a long time to come so Sandra and Mike can change the seat fabric every once in a while.

We must say we are pleased how much better the chairs are now and our great clients Sandra and Mike now have very stable, quality chairs!

Thank you, Sandra and Mike for trusting in me!

Peja